Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [230]
Simms has really done her homework, and not for nothing has her book been referred to as a “groundbreaking work” (Sunday Times) and “a kind of Île-de-France profonde” (Independent). I urge anyone with even the vaguest thoughts of setting out for the Île-de-France to go with this book in hand—it’s a slender paperback. Simms has thoughtfully provided updates on her Web site (anhourfromparis.com).
AUVERS-SUR-OISE
Only twenty-two miles north of Paris and easily reached by train from the Gare Saint-Lazare, Auvers-sur-Oise is a small village known not only as where Vincent van Gogh spent the last weeks of his life (having arrived by train, in 1890), but also as the home, from 1862 to 1878, of Charles-François Daubigny, a painter considered a forerunner of Impressionism. Other Impressionists and landscape artists were drawn to Auvers as well, including Paul Cézanne, Camille Pissarro, and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.
At the village’s Auberge Ravoux, Van Gogh rented room number 5, with full board, for three and a half francs per day. Van Gogh painted more than seventy masterpieces in Auvers in fewer than eight weeks, but his room there was his last: he shot himself in a nearby field and died at the auberge shortly thereafter. According to Alexandra Leaf and Fred Leeman, authors of Van Gogh’s Table at the Auberge Ravoux (Artisan, 2001)—a book you must read if you go to Auvers—Van Gogh lived in at least thirty-eight places in four countries, all in his life of thirty-seven years. Due to French superstitions about suicide, it’s unlikely that the room was ever rented again after his death. Both Van Gogh’s room and the Auberge Ravoux were declared historical landmarks.
In 1926 the auberge was officially renamed Maison de Van Gogh, and in 1952 Roger and Micheline Tagliana bought it and lovingly revitalized it. Four years later, when Vincente Minnelli was filming Lust for Life with Kirk Douglas as Van Gogh, he shot on location at the auberge, finally correcting the misconception that Van Gogh had died in Provence. In 1985, Belgian businessman Dominique-Charles Janssens was hit by a drunk driver a few yards from the former Auberge Ravoux. While he was convalescing, he read Van Gogh’s letters and became quite passionate about the artist’s work and life. He also learned at this time that the auberge was for sale, and he decided to buy it. He writes in his foreword to Van Gogh’s Table that he wanted to create a spiritual refuge where people could connect with Van Gogh’s art and feelings, a place where they could really step back in time: “There, they would find Van Gogh’s room, a small intimate space, empty except for memories. Visitors could furnish it with their own feelings or experiences. No mass tourism would trample through the tranquility of the place. It would be preserved as a refuge of silence from the frenzy of the external world.” The Maison de Van Gogh (maisondevangogh.fr) also has a worthy restaurant; note that neither the restaurant nor the museum is open year-round.
Other attractions in Auvers-sur-Oise include the home of Dr. Gachet, the cemetery where Van Gogh and his brother Theo are buried, the Romanesque Gothic church immortalized in Van Gogh’s Church at Auvers-sur-Oise, the Château d’Auvers-sur-Oise (also known as Château de Léry), and the Musée Daubigny.
In addition to works by Charles-François Daubigny, the Musée Daubigny (musee-daubigny.com) features the works of other nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists, including some of Daubigny’s own students (among them Hippolyte-Camille Delpy and Alexandre-René Véron), plus Jean-François Millet, Dr. Gachet, and Cézanne. I’ve been a fan of Daubigny’s works since I first discovered